Barnett Weekly

I have an orderly mind but a disorderly desk. In this, I think, I am not alone. There are those, to be sure, whose desks are neat and tidy, pens and pencils standing upright in a cup like good little soldiers, perhaps an in-box holding one or two pieces of paper. This, however, is not my desk. My desk has piles.

The pile system of information management is the easiest – and in its way the most elegant – system ever developed. Sure, files and file folders are handy, but they require gobs of time. For the devoted, there are little labels that can be applied to the folder tabs, color-coded for quick visual categorization; there are various types of files themselves, some with expanding bottoms for particularly hefty records; and of course, there is the writing of information on the tabs themselves, where good penmanship counts!

The power of the pile, on the other hand, is its simplicity. Virtually every scrap of paper that ends up on my desk makes it way onto the pile. Hour by hour, day by day the pile grows. Stacked with notes, reports, printed receipts, printed emails, and junk mail, when it begins to obscure the bottom edge of my desktop LCD screen I go through it and throw most of it away. Time, it seems, is the great destroyer of information’s value, and lucky for us that’s true, or we’d all be hoarders.

When I need to find something I know just where it is. Everything I need is in the pile, and it will take me just a moment or two to find it please hold on…ah ha! There it is, just where I left it. In the pile!

Some say my pile is chaos, but I strongly disagree. Chaos is the random arrival of physical scraps of information, not my storage of it. This information arrives constantly from various widely disbursed locations and myriad sources known and unknown. The power of the pile overcomes this information entropy and things come to rest and find stability. My pile actually manifests order arising out of chaos!

Others see complete disorder. I see a reflection of pure mind. Our minds are not file cabinets despite whatever claptrap you have been led to believe. Our minds are an infinite information scrap pile containing the entire universe. All and everything we receive is added to mind’s pile, ready for retrieval. Does it take a moment, sometimes, to locate information? Of course it does – that’s the way piles are meant to work! Recent information is near the top and easy to find. Less recent – but nonetheless vital information – can be located at deeper levels. It’s there; we can find it. This may take a moment – practice patience.

It’s always interesting how much of my desk pile is worth keeping: under 5%! As I periodically make my way down the stack, scrap after scrap is tossed into the recycling bin. It pays to be ruthless when working with a pile; I’ve thrown away some very fine doodles!

Now I will admit, from time to time, I’ve been too ruthless and felt regret at losing a phone number or little notation. But overall, my pile works just fine. Perhaps this column will end up in yours.

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If there is a heaven, and many believe there is, it has a hot tub. Three hundred years ago there were perhaps ten or twenty people in the entire world, kings and queens all, who at any hour day or night could lower themselves into a piping hot tub of clean water. Those hot tubs of old required the constant toil of others – to find, cut and haul wood, stoke and tend fires, gather and move heated stones, draw and carry fresh water. In great jewel-encrusted golden tubs the royals of antiquity soaked away their worries and relaxed, while their soaking habit mobilized an entire economy of workers. Just think of it: today an average guy like me with a hot tub can live life like a king.

This year spring has been particularly wet and watery, a liquid luxury after several years of drought. I can sense the bamboo shoots lurking just below the soil’s surface, their root rhizomes fat with sugary sap and poised to soar skyward at six inches a day. The succulents that have survived in the wet winter ground are plump with water, some looking more like green toads than plants. Japanese maples are leafing out quickly, several weeks earlier than last year. Moss and lichen form a soft green shawl draped heavily around the arms and branches of our huge Black Walnut. As days lengthen, the garden is quickly coming to life.

On Friday when it rained I stopped working for a while, left my desk, made my way downstairs and outside to the garden, removed my clothes and sank slowly into our hot tub. Submerged up to my neck in 102 degree water, warmly protected from the chilly elements, the heavy rain drops on my head felt cool and soothing. “I’m completely wet,” I thought, “I can’t get any wetter.” I tipped my head back against the side of the tub and let the steady rain plainly strike my face and open mouth. Rainwater, in case you’ve never tried it, tastes sweet. The tall wind-whipped Eucalyptus trees sighed loudly and swayed broadly as if beckoning a great force, the bamboo hissed and bowed deeply. Suddenly, there was a massive downpour. For a moment heaven and earth were fully joined by water, and then almost as fast, the rain moved on across the valley floor.

Opening my eyes, I pushed myself upright, and sat facing east. I could see the rain gaining distance quickly, a gray mist sweeping in dark swaying curtains over the Mayacamas mountains. Behind me, the thick clouds suddenly broke open and brilliant golden sunlight sliced into the garden and filled the sky above. For a fleeting moment, a vibrant rainbow all-at-once appeared, curving majestically across the darkness above the mountains to the east. Then the sunlight disappeared behind the thick clouds, the wind resumed and once again it began to pour.

I slipped back down into the soothing water, buoyant and almost floating, cradled like a baby in his mother’s womb. I settled in and totally relaxed. Suddenly the perfection of all and everything was clear, not a single rain drop out of place, every leaf, every cloud, every moment just as it is, absolutely perfect and complete.

There is, you see, a heaven after all.

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Our granddaughter Isabelle is now two years old, speaking in sentences and learning how to work with the world. Along the line she started calling others “honey,” most likely because that’s what she’s been called; either that or in a past life she was a coffee shop waitress. In any case, when Isabelle calls me honey she gets almost anything she wants. At the moment, it’s chocolate.

I enjoy bittersweet chocolate and after sampling the many varieties available I’ve decided I really like Droste bittersweet 70% cocoa pastilles from Holland. These cute, thin wafers – packaged in foil and wrapped in a hexagonal cardboard tube – are not expensive yet the flavor is surprisingly rich and wonderful, a benefit of Europe’s storied heritage of making chocolate.

We introduced Isabelle to chocolate perhaps six months ago. At that time her teeth were fewer, and eating chocolate meant breaking off tiny bites with her front teeth while I held the wafer. Today she insists on holding the chocolate herself, but continues to take tiny bites. As I watch she looks up at me, then holds out the wafer and says “Have a little bite, honey.” At such moments, it’s not just the chocolate that’s melting.

Isabelle is in love with the world, and there’s a lesson in that for all of us. If we are out and about she’ll say “Do you see that car there?” or “Do you see that person walking?” There is nothing that she finds boring. I bought some tangerines that came wrapped in purple nylon mesh, slit it open and emptied the fruit into a bowl. We shared peeling and eating one tiny tangerine while the purple mesh, knotted at one end and sealed at the other, sat empty on the dining room table. “Look! It’s a fish, honey!” she said, and reached for the softly pliable mesh. We played for half an hour as our purple mesh fish swam around the salt and pepper and poked its head through the open handle of a tea tray. She laughed, I laughed and the world was just fine.

As adults, we regret the past and worry about the future, but for Isabelle there’s little of that. Isabelle is mostly present in the moment. The other night my wife and I were babysitting while our daughter and her husband went to their first movie in years. Isabelle clutched a stuffed animal, “This is my friend Woof-Woof,” she said, “Pet him, honey.” My hand smoothed the soft artificial fur while she nodded. “My mom is going to pick me up,” she suddenly proclaimed, and mysteriously within a minute we heard a soft rapping at the door.

Sometimes while on the play structure at the playground Isabelle feels scared. “Can you help me, honey?” she asks and I do, of course. Helping her has made me realize how hard it is for me to ask for help when I need it. I’m not talking about physical help, but emotional help when I’m feeling anxious or uncertain. Adult men must be strong, I was told and part of me believes it. My wiser part, however, thinks adulthood is a myth. So I’m paying more respect to how I feel.

I thought I was helping Isabelle. Turns out she was helping me.

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My old man, he’s a corker, always ready with the comeback line. Take the time we were at the airport; he’s in a wheel chair being pushed by a hyper-active airport employee and I’m power-walking alongside while lugging my Eddie Bauer bag from the gate to the curb.

“Wow,” he says, “this is some long walk! I can’t believe it.” Me, I’m huffing, puffing and breaking into a sweat while he rides in the lap of luxury. “Hey,” I shout over the amplified announcements, “I’m the one who’s walking! What are you complaining about?” “Just keep up,” he nods in my direction.

What’s to tell a 90-year old guy from Brooklyn? He’s been scrappy so long it’s too late to for him to change now. Like we check in at the gate and they announce American flight 16 to JFK’s been canceled, stuck in Salt Lake City due to lousy weather. “What’s going on?” he barks at me, “What’s taking so long?” “Flight’s canceled, Dad, they’re trying to find us another flight.” I turn to the clerk behind the counter and raise my eyebrows, a gesture profound and direct in its communication. She smiles at me, quickly nodding, and goes back to furiously typing away on her keyboard.

“Do they need my passport?” he yells from his wheelchair. Hard of hearing, he figures everyone else can’t hear either. “She’s doing the best she can,” I respond. “Relax, you’ll live longer.” “Who told you that, Shakespeare?” he barked, suddenly hearing me clear as a bell over the crowd. I looked over and caught his eye, glinting. We end up booked on Delta, in two first class seats, yet. Amazing what a little patience and a 90-year old in a wheel chair can do.

Security requires him to get out of his chair and remove his shoes, a brown pair of loafers he bought 40 years ago. He calls them his “flying boots,” and for some reason has worn them exclusively on airplanes. He used to be in the freight forwarding business, and once was one of the airlines’ biggest customers. “Used be served caviar on TWA,” he tells me for at least the 15th time. “Once had a whole bowl of Beluga just for me.” He’s grinning with the memory of being king of the skies. “Well, no caviar today old fellow,” I respond, “but you might get some ice cream.” “Beluga?” he asks.

He perks up at the flight attendant, whom he calls “stewardess.” She’s got an English accent and leans in real close as she talks to him. “Champagne?” she asks, smiling demurely. Despite his macular degeneration and two hearing aids he can see and hear well enough to note she’s attractive, and he gazes directly into her blue eyes. He’s always liked an English accent. “What else do you have to offer?” he smiles suggestively. Her smile broadens, amused at the attention of this mischievous little old guy. I sink lower in my seat.

After dropping him in New York I hop a plane to the Rockies for a weekend meditation retreat. When I get home I call to see how he’s doing. “Rumor has it you’ve transcended ego,” he says. “That’s marvelous, what can I say? You must be very proud!”

Like I say, my old man’s a corker.

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I recently returned from my annual silent retreat at Shambhala Mountain Center in Colorado. I continue to be fascinated by what happens when my mouth is shut. I have an active mind prone to playful ideas and deep inquiry, and when they surface, like many I am inclined to share them with others. Deprived of this option through the discipline of silence, thoughts kept to myself while sitting for hours focused on my breath and observing thoughts as they arise and fade away, I ultimately find that most things on my mind are not worth expressing anyway.

When a group of 60 people simultaneously engage in such discipline, the experience is magnified. Sitting together for 14 hours a day in silence, eating three meals a day together in silence, and waking up the next morning in silence creates a unique form of intimacy unmatched by casual discourse. Though instantaneous impressions, likes, dislikes, fascination and repulsion all arise upon first meeting others, they fade away in the absence of talking. Opinions are often the fuel through which we largely find justification for our initial feelings and fantasies about others, and when deprived of such fuel our automatic engines of discrimination peter out.

By week’s end, despite little actual conversation, what had been a group of strangers becomes an oddly comfortable family. Within the safe confines of a quiet and predictable container, postural shifts and adjustments, walking styles and body movements, facial expressions and hair styles coalesce into an all-encompassing non-verbal transmission far more revealing than speech. In such an environment, words are at best superfluous and at worst destructive. Bereft of verbal argument and rationale, people are simply people, working with silence in whatever ways we can.

With mouth shut mind opens and begins to accommodate space. Actually, space is naturally present at all times, but it is veiled by the incessant chatter of discursive thought and its vocal expression. Within silence the internal chatter slows, gaps appear and the ever-present space is more easily revealed. Mind begins to mix with space. Slowly the gaps widen and periods of actual peace and quiet grow. Occasionally within that space, sharp clarity of awareness forms – insight beyond thought – knowing beyond thinking. And then, just as quickly, it dissolves. Moments change and cannot be grasped. This is the practice: not grasping and not not grasping – relaxing into simple awareness.

The practice continues into the night, even while asleep. Waking in the morning reasserts the continuum of silence, and without any expectation of conversation mind continues to relax. One even stops talking to oneself, internal dialogue too distracting. And then, there is the boredom.

To infer that silent meditation is never boring is to ignore the limits of self. Meditation is inherently boring, extremely boring, boring to the point of nearly intolerable. It is at the point of greatest boredom that I confront the edge, the location where ego entertainment ends and the reality of no-self begins. This can be a scary spot with nothing to hold on to, no reference points, and no place to go – the spacious open-ended moment of being. I rush back from that brink repeatedly, finding stability in my breath.

Breathe space in, breathe space out. Thoughts arise and thoughts dissolve. And so it goes.

Reprinted from The Sonoma Sun Newspaper

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